Moving Platforms, N/A (Global)

The future for 21st Century rail travel?

Priestmangoode designs a system for non-stop, seamless rail travel from home to destination

Moving Platforms is a completely inter-connected rail infrastructure where local trams connect to a network of non-stop high speed trains enabling passengers to travel from their local stop to a local address at their destination (even in another country) without getting off a train. The concept is a totally joined-up network that allows passengers to transfer directly from one moving tram or high speed train to another. This new integrated infrastructure mimics the way the internet works, creating a system similar to the one that allows your home PC to connect to a computer on the other side of the world via a series of connected networks.

Moving Platforms involves a network of high speed trains that run non-stop between two ends of a continent, Los Angeles to New York for instance. The high speed trains run on a line that passes outside towns and cities with a network of local feeder trams that carry passengers from local stops out to meet them. As they near each other, the high speed train slows down slightly and the tram speeds up alongside it, at which point the trains physically connect via a docking system allowing passengers to transfer directly across from the tram to the high speed train and vice versa.

Once transfers are complete, the trains separate, with the high speed train speeding up again along its route, and the tram slowing down and going back into the town or city centre with the newly disembarked passengers. The tram, in effect, acts as a moving station. The same system could also be used by passengers transferring from one high speed train to another.